Tesseract
Mollie "Tesseract" Steunenberg is minor character in the Wild Cards series of books. History Mollie Steunenberg was the only girl in a farm household with her parents, grandparents, and eight brothers. Attempting to make a break from the grind of farm life, she became a contestant on the second season of the American Hero reality television series, but got voted off in the fifth week. Her power was a formidable one however, and drew the attention of Noel Matthews, who was assembling a team of aces for a daring heist in the People's Paradise of Africa. Matthews needed Mollie to move a large number of gold ingots from a bank vault to a warehouse in Kongoville, before making a second portal to deposit most of the gold on a luxury yacht. Instead of the first jaunt however, she double-crossed the infiltration team and brought them back to her father's barn where her father and several brothers were waiting in ambush. The Steunenbergs killed Broadcast on arrival, but Matthews's skills quickly ended the subsequent gunfight, and he forced Mollie to make another portal back to the African warehouse. Once there, she was tied up and made to generate the various portals needed to split the gold, but her own cut was reduced to a single ingot for her betrayal. Afterwards, Mollie fell in with a thief named Ffodor, who trained her to use her powers more creatively, as well as teaching her how to pick handcuffs and how to be more effective as a thief in general. Eventually, Mollie convinces him to help her rob Baba Yaga's casino, but they are caught and Ffodor is turned into a Louis XIV chair by Baba Yaga. Baba Yaga then forces her into moving jokers to Kazakhstan to participate in a joker fight club and working with Michael Berman as his assistant. This arrangement came to an end when Berman came under investigation due to his apparent connection to bootleg fight club and American Hero footage, as well as the discovery of Tesseract's own involvement in the trafficking. Francis Black of the Jokertown 5th Precinct and Agent Norwood of SCARE then forced Steunenberg's co-operation to stage an off-the-books raid on the joker fight club in Kazakhstan. Mollie was only too happy to be rid of Berman and strike a blow against the crime ring's leader, but soon fled the resulting chaos stranding Black in Kazakhstan as she stepped through a portal to the safety of Paris. After being arrested in Paris, Mollie escapes the police and proceeds to return to Baba Yaga's casino in order to rob it. Unfortunately, the madness induced by Horrorshow is able to seep through her portals and begins to affect her family as she brings loot, including slot machines and safes, into her family's barn. She and her family turn on each other, causing massive injuries due to attacking each other with crowbars and pitchforks. Mollie manages to get her family to the hospital using her abilities. During the heist, Mollie also delivers the body of Jamal Norwood, along with several of Baba Yaga's thugs, to the Jokertown police precinct. Later, she is recruited by Billy Ray to help the Committee search for its lost aces in Talas, but the madness overtakes her and Hoodoo Mama, who is assisting her, and the two attack each other viciously. At one point Mollie cuts off Hoodoo Mama's finger with a portal, then proceeds to bite the other woman's eyebrow off of her face and eat it. Eventually she flees from the Committee to Half-Moon Bay, where she murders a shopkeeper and two shoppers when she is interrupted shoplifting. Realizing that Horroshow's madness has permanently infected her, she returns to the Committee and asks to be locked up. Billy Ray and Babel, however, realize they still need her and convince her once again to use her powers: first to break the Highwayman out of prison and then to return to Talas to fight alongside them in a last ditch effort to rid the world of Horrorshow. Mollie agrees and accompanies them. After Horrorshow is defeated, Mollie recovers Ffodor's transmorgrified body and has it given a proper burial. It is also revealed at this point that she has been placed under arrest and forced to wear an ankle bracelet that will knock her unconscious and alert authorities to her location if she uses her powers. Wild Cards Traits Mollie can generate fourth dimensional gateways at will. Her departure portals can appear anywhere close to her, while the destination portals can be anywhere in the world. A small portal allows her to slip an arm through to manipulate objects that would otherwise be out of reach, and she can also make doorways large enough for any number of people to file through. The alignments of the portals can also be anything she chooses, so she can opt to place two portals close together to transport objects, or part of herself, through otherwise impossible angles. Appearance Mollie is short, plump, and cute, with curling red hair, dark brown eyes, and has a sprinkle of freckles on her nose. Personality Mollie is competitive to a point, but not well developed enough in a strategic sense to be very successful at winning. Selected Reading * * *Wild Cards Volume XXIII: High Stakes